This invention relates to containers for holding foodstuffs and the like and more particularly to a container having a molded-in directional pouring feature for controlling the outflow of the contents from the container.
Many varieties of containers are currently known for holding packaged foodstuffs for sale at the retail or commercial level. Examples of such well-known containers include aluminum cans or injection-molded plastic containers for beverages and glass or plastic jars for foodstuffs such as condiments. While such containers have been known for decades, such containers are continually being improved by reducing the container material to reduce cost and waste and by making the container more convenient for use by the consumer. Both of these factors, reduction in cost and waste as well as increasing convenience, can help facilitate sale of the product held by the container.
Many of the containers on the market today are inconvenient or clumsy to use. This is particularly true with regard to highly viscous foodstuffs such as ketchup, mayonnaise, relish and mustard. For example, the difficulty in pouring ketchup from a glass ketchup bottle is well-known in that the ketchup is often slow to initially pour and then tends to pour too rapidly or glop out of the bottle once pouring starts. To overcome this problem, ketchup now commonly comes in a plastic squeeze bottle that is more convenient for customer use. However, use of such plastic squeeze bottles is not practical for commercial size containers for foodstuffs that often come in containers of 64 ounces or greater for use at restaurants, cafeterias, and other commercial or institutional applications.
Many containers of relatively larger size are known to use pour guides to make use of the container more convenient. However, it is believed that such pour guides are impractical for use with large commercial size wide-mouth containers for condiments. As one example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,626,258 and 5,012,960 disclose configured lids that can be attached to a wide-mouth paint can for providing a controlled flow guide. However, use of an auxiliary component requires an additional part for sale to customer, requires effort by the customer to use, and results in additional manufacturing and sale costs as well as additional waste.
Newer liquid laundry detergent containers are known to have special pouring spouts. Typically, the container includes a narrow spout that projects upwardly and outwardly a considerable distance beyond the threaded neck of the container for directing the pour of fluid so that the fluid does not come into contact with the threaded neck and so that fluid will self-drain back into the container. Examples of such self-draining pouring spouts can be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,207,356 and 5,078,288. However, such self-draining containers are expensive to make and virtually preclude stacking the containers one on top of another.
Other containers have been proposed for directing the control of the outflow from a wide-mouth opening container by including a highly configured mouth such as shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,443,184, 5,392,948, and 5,246,149. However, the unique and complex shaping of the openings of these containers results in the containers being permanently opened and precludes the sealing of the container, such as would be required for perishable foodstuffs.